From ballerina to tool company executive, how Miss Georgia persevered through adversity

She competed eight times before winning a local pageant.

She reached her dream to be a professional ballerina, but she struggled with body-image issues and left to pursue a corporate career.

She became an executive in a male-dominated industry.

She qualified for the Miss Georgia Scholarship Competition after a seven-year hiatus from pageants and finished as first runner-up last year as Miss Macon.

So when Tara Schiphof, as Miss Capital City, won the 2023 Miss Georgia title Saturday at the RiverCenter for the Performing Arts in Columbus, the achievement culminated years of perseverance through adversity.

“I was over the moon,” she told the Ledger-Enquirer. “Honestly, it was a surreal experience. I wouldn’t have changed my path for anything.”

The $25,000 scholarship Schiphof earned as Miss Georgia and the approximately additional $8,000 she has won from pageants the past two years will go toward reducing her debt of more than $70,000 in student loans, she said.

Schiphof, 25, is a native of King, North Carolina. She earned a bachelor’s degree in classical ballet from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and a master’s degree in management from Wake Forest University. She danced professionally with the Boston Ballet. She now lives in Sugar Hill, Georgia, and works as a marketing assistant manager — the youngest in her branch — for tool company Stanley Black & Decker.

A male customer once told her, Schiphof recalled, “You’re just a blonde girl. You don’t know anything about tools. Why don’t you go to a makeup store instead?”

He laughed and walked away.

“I could have let it defeat me and define me, or I could prove him wrong,” she said. “This is my chance to show women they’re strong enough to overcome things like that. … It was a hard moment for me, but I chose the higher route.”

Schiphof has been a motivational speaker in front of thousands of folks. She has 123,000 followers on Instagram and 10,400 followers on TikTok, promoting brands such as American Eagle, Fabletics, Liquid IV, Dior and Velvet Eyewear.

Through her #yesYOUcan community service initiative, she raised $3,000 to fund three scholarships for high school students who wrote an essay about perseverance.

Q&A with Miss Georgia Tara Schiphof

The Ledger-Enquirer interviewed Schiphof the day after she won the Miss Georgia crown, qualifying her for the next Miss America competition, whose dates haven’t been announced. Here are excerpts from that interview, edited for brevity and clarity:

Q: What have you learned from your perseverance?

A: “There’s a difference between saying we believe in ourselves and truly believing it. … A lot of times, our belief is fueled by outward sources — validation or even likes, comments and followers on social media. If our belief in ourselves is fueled by external factors, then we always will be affected by something out of our control. That can make or break your performance or your ability to showcase who you are. So I knew I needed to do the inner work to ensure, … even in moments when I felt uncertainty or even had moments of doubt, I could still go back to those strong beliefs and know that would ground me. I think that’s what made the difference. … Life is a part of falling in love with the process of where you’re meant to go. I said on stage that every season of our life serves a purpose in helping to build us into who we’re meant to become. I think that’s incredibly important to remember when we go through periods of loss or failure or grief.”

Q: How did you do that inner work?

A: “I printed out the qualifications for Miss Georgia, and I was able to see that I was ready for this and I was deserving of this. It kind of took away that aspect of trying to control something I can’t control, such as someone’s opinion. I just had to have faith in the aspect of timing. … The day after (Miss Georgia 2022) Kelsey (Hollis) won, I got back to work. I did not take one day off, actually. Some days, maybe it was just going over some interview prep or doing a little bit of personal development or reading a book about confidence or performance under pressure, emotional intelligence, things that can help you be a better leader. … I made sure I did something every single day that would benefit me the next time I competed at Miss Georgia so, in the small amount of time that I’m with the judges, I can truly reflect who I am and show them why they should pick me.”

Q: What do you want to advocate for as Miss Georgia?

A: “I truly want to make everlasting impact and make sure the women after me continue to receive the same benefits as I have from being in this organization. … I understand the importance of being able to market myself and the organization in a way that will bring in more women to the sisterhood, more scholarship dollars, volunteers and sponsors, while also promoting the importance of community service and also owning your own personal style. … I think a lot of people see Miss America or the state titleholders as these perfect people who don’t experience challenges. Those people sometimes believe they don’t see themselves there or don’t believe they could ever be that person. I want to help fill that gap and let women know that I am just like them. I’m the first to talk about my failures, how I’ve struggled. I’ve been through grief. I’ve experienced loss. Then I’ve been able to overcome those things. … I was just a small-town girl who had a dream and the courage to believe that it was possible. If I can do it, they can do it too.”

Q: What advice do you give about responding to failure?

A: “We always view failure as something negative. I don’t know why society teaches us that, but the only time we ever grow in life is when we experience pain or feel uncomfortable or defeat or frustration. But it’s about how we choose to respond to those feelings and those emotions. … I want to advocate for people to keep going and to keep fighting and to keep knocking on that door. Eventually that door is going to open, and I think people just need to hear that. … A lot of my platform is based off the work of Angela Duckworth, who is a psychologist who has studied the development of grit in children. It’s been proven that children who develop grit, the ability to persevere, are 69% more successful than their peers, and 49% of adults claim that the fear of failure is what keeps them from success and happiness. … I would love to start an after-school program in every single middle school and high school in the state of Georgia to focus on the #yesYOUcan initiative to provide mentors, resources, scholarship dollars.”

Q: What was the toughest moment for you to overcome?

A: “Right before I won (a local North Carolina pageant) in 2009, the eighth year I competed and walked off the stage with nothing was hard. You put in so much time and effort. I felt a wave of doubt and confusion. I felt defeated. … My family, not that they didn’t believe in me, but they wanted me to try something else because they knew how hard I’d work for it, and they didn’t want to see me heartbroken anymore. … I felt that something was wrong with me. I started to analyze my environment and compare myself to so many people, trying to fix whatever I thought was wrong with me. But there was nothing wrong with me. I believe God made me go through that experience so I could be Miss Georgia today. … In that moment of defeat, I had two choices: I could let it define me, or I could let it change me. Someone told me nobody is going to believe in you unless you believe in yourself, and sometimes that means success is a lonely road. … I continued to work. I knew I needed to get to the point where I was OK with coming in the very last (place) in the competition and still walk out feeling like a winner. I knew if I could get to that point in my mind, then I was going to feel free. I wasn’t going to feel attached to an outcome and let something completely out of my control affect my happiness, my mood and how I feel about myself. … I felt like I finally got my power in who I want to be. … If it weren’t for that painful moment, I wouldn’t have really understood the value that there is beauty in pain because that’s called growth. What we decide to do in those moments is what’s going to make us be the person we’re meant to be.”

Q: What was the winning difference in 2009 and 2023?

A: “I think it was my mindset. … Because I wanted something so bad, it actually held me back. … I was trying to be too perfect when I just needed to be Tara. … When you’re looking at all these amazing women who all deserve to win this title or that title, it’s those small things I think that make you stand out. So I needed to get to the point where I didn’t let the pressure or an outcome I can’t control be something that was going to affect how I was going to perform. … Instead of performing for them, I was performing for me.”

Q: What was the motivation behind establishing the scholarships you awarded?

A: “My grandmother passed away unexpectedly in September, and she was my very best friend. She had a strong passion for the arts. … There were times we couldn’t afford for me to go to summer dance intensives but (they) were quite necessary for me to continue to grow at the pace I needed to become a professional dancer, when only 1% of dancers get contracts. So I was very grateful for the sacrifices she made. Along with my mom and the rest of my family, we found the Stokes County Arts Council in my hometown in King, North Carolina. They were a resource for me. I got to apply for scholarships through them and go to those summer intensives and pursue my dream. Because of them and my family, they played a role in ultimately getting that contract and (being) a professional ballerina. So when she died, I felt a strong urgency to give back to the people that gave to me.”

Q: Why did you choose to work in a male-dominated industry?

A: “Because I wanted to show women that we can make a difference in fields that lack female representation, and male-dominated industries need women. We need to use our voices and truly change the world.”

Q: How and why did you go from being a ballerina to working for a tool company?

A: “The principle behind it was the things I’ve learned about perseverance and not being afraid to fail. I wasn’t afraid to step out of my comfort zone, even though I knew nothing about power tools. At that point in my life, I had never even used a drill, maybe a hammer. That was it. But I knew that I wanted to work for a Fortune 500 company, and I knew I had a strong skill set that I actually got from being involved in the arts: It taught me discipline, the value of hard work and perseverance and what it meant to be a leader, knowing when to lead but also when to be a team player. I was able to hone those skills even more when I got my master’s degree. I knew Stanley Black & Decker was a great company to work for and had a lot of wonderful people in it, and I knew I could learn a lot from them. … I told them I was teachable and manageable and ready to learn and hungry. When you’re able to show people those qualities and you’re able to articulate those things, which I learned through competing in pageantry, you’re able to show up in rooms where maybe you felt like before you didn’t have a place. … I learned a lot of product knowledge, I know how to use some tools now, and I no longer am worried about getting a flat tire. (Laughs.) … I’m not saying it wasn’t challenging, but just the way people encouraged me, even in moments where there might have been an instance where I felt defeated or didn’t know enough or because I was a woman and wouldn’t be taken seriously, there were people in my corner that still lifted me up and gave me that hope. But I also had that inner fire in me to be that representative for women. So if they see me in that position with all of those men, they can see themselves as well.”

Q: How can anyone else succeed in a position where they aren’t in the demographic majority?

A: “You have to develop confidence from within yourself. I was hired to make decisions because they trusted me and my ability to make those decisions. So I don’t need to second-guess those decisions, even if somebody disagrees with them. … How strong are you going to be in moments where your environment might not be for you? That takes a lot of personal development and self-work. But when you get to that point, you’re not going to be afraid to walk into any room. You’re not going to second-guess yourself, and even when that thought enters your brain, you’re just going to let it go because you know what you bring to the table and you’ve done the work. … Remember that your worth comes from yourself and never from an outward source.”

Q: What else do you want folks to know about you and what becoming Miss Georgia means to you?

A: “Don’t have limiting beliefs about yourself. … You need to know that you can reach a goal in your heart before you try to pursue it. You have to believe it. It has to be such a strong belief, you can visualize yourself in that position before it even happens. … We get so hyper-focused on needing instant gratification, needing something now. But when we can learn to step back and reflect on situations we’ve been through, where maybe we’ve experienced loss or failure, and turn that around and look at it through a growth mindset and turn it into an opportunity to build, then we become unstoppable, and we start to understand why the journey is so much more important than our destination. While I am so grateful to be the next Miss Georgia, I know that without the things I’ve been through in the past, I wouldn’t be ready to not only be Miss Georgia but also Miss America.”